Clio Awards 2025: FCB leads as Alan Cumming hosts night of gay sheep and a century-old influencer

Ogilvy, meanwhile, continued its strong run under global CCO Liz Taylor. The network took home five Grands for work including ‘Michael CeraVe,’ a bizarrely brilliant skincare conspiracy theory turned content campaign starring actor Michael Cera. It’s the kind of attention-grabbing weirdness that awards juries (and TikTok) love and will likely boost Ogilvy’s standing in this year’s WCR.

Close behind was David Madrid, scoring four Grands for its unlikely creative hero: a 100-year-old influencer named Marina Prieto, who fronted a campaign for outdoor media giant JCDecaux. Her image was splashed across ghosted-out ad inventory to make the case for better media coverage of older generations.

Other strong performers included LePub (also four wins), Serviceplan Germany (three) and Colenso BBDO, whose standout work for Pedigree earned it two Grands and a place in this year’s unofficial top tier.

With Cannes Lions and The Drum Marketing Awards taking place in June, we’ll be publishing an update to reveal how the first half of the year awards have impacted the World Creative Rankings leader board.

The full World Creative Rankings report will be published in February 2026 and will aggregate the results of every major award program across the year, including The Drum Awards Festival 2025, which takes place in November.

Creative that stuck – and stood for something

Among the many Grand Clio winners, a few campaigns stood out for their originality, purpose and sheer storytelling power.

Take ‘Rainbow Wool’ by Serviceplan Germany, a campaign that began with a gay sheep and ended with a Grand Clio for Creative Commerce. The story started on a small farm in rural Germany, where two rams were discovered showing affection for one another. Rather than brushing it aside, the farmers embraced the couple, placed them in a safe pasture together and launched a gay sanctuary for sheep, which spun their wool into a Pride product line.

Meanwhile, Rethink won big with its sharp, satirical campaign ‘Paid Through Parents’ for Molson Coors. With Olympic rules barring non-sponsor brands from supporting athletes directly and with the Olympics refusing to buy tickets for athletes’ families, Rethink found a workaround. It sponsored the parents to attend.

Decked out in branded merch, the parents appeared on billboards, in influencer content and media interviews, all while cheering from the sidelines in Paris.

Then there was ‘Night Fishing’ by Innocean for Hyundai, a moody short film shot entirely on the carmaker’s Ioniq 7 onboard cameras. Blending car tech with cinematic tension, it turned an EV launch into a narrative experience and picked up a Grand Clio for Branded Entertainment & Content – a neat reminder that, when done right, product features don’t have to interrupt the story – they can be the story.

A night of recognition

Beyond the brand work, the Clio stage also honored some of the people driving meaningful change across the industry. Jerri DeVard, founder of the Black Executive CMO Alliance (BECA), received the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award for her decades of leadership and, more significantly, for her tireless work supporting and advancing the careers of Black marketers.

DeVard launched BECA to provide mentorship, access and visibility for Black professionals in senior marketing roles, addressing the lack of representation at the top of the industry. Her work has created a pipeline of talent, equipped future leaders and challenged companies to commit to more inclusive leadership structures.

Digital sensation Jools LeBron received the Breakthrough Award after her viral ‘Demure’ campaign (which turned into Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year) led to brand deals with Verizon, Taco Bell and Elf Cosmetics. Her rise reflects the growing power of creator-led storytelling in modern brand-building – something the Clios leaned into heavily this year.